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Soon to be featured in the Ken Burns documentary The U.S. and the Holocaust, premiering on PBS September 18th
A New York Times Notable Book • Winner of the National Jewish Book Award • Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award • A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist
“A gripping detective story, a stirring epic, a tale of ghosts and dark marvels, a thrilling display of scholarship, a meditation on the unfathomable mystery of good and evil, a testimony to the enduring power of the ancient archetypes that haunt one Jewish family and the greater human family, The Lost is as complex and rich with meaning and story as the past it seeks to illuminate. A beautiful book, beautifully written.”—Michael Chabon
In this rich and riveting narrative, a writer's search for the truth behind his family's tragic past in World War II becomes a remarkably original epic—part memoir, part reportage, part mystery, and part scholarly detective work—that brilliantly explores the nature of time and memory, family and history.
The Lost begins as the story of a boy who grew up in a family haunted by the disappearance of six relatives during the Holocaust—an unmentionable subject that gripped his imagination from earliest childhood. Decades later, spurred by the discovery of a cache of desperate letters written to his grandfather in 1939 and tantalized by fragmentary tales of a terrible betrayal, Daniel Mendelsohn sets out to find the remaining eyewitnesses to his relatives' fates. That quest eventually takes him to a dozen countries on four continents and forces him to confront the wrenching discrepancies between the histories we live and the stories we tell. And it leads him, finally, back to the small Ukrainian town where his family's story began, and where the solution to a decades-old mystery awaits him.
Deftly moving between past and present, interweaving a world-wandering odyssey with childhood memories of a now-lost generation of immigrant Jews and provocative ruminations on biblical texts and Jewish history, The Lost transforms the story of one family into a profound, morally searching meditation on our fragile hold on the past. Deeply personal, grippingly suspenseful, and beautifully written, this literary tour de force illuminates all that is lost, and found, in the passage of time.
When Daniel Mendelsohn was a child, the Holocaust was a topic never to be discussed. His family was haunted by the disappearance of six relatives during that time, a mystery that intrigued him for years. The Lost is the story of Mendelsohn’s search for his missing family members, a quest that took him to twelve countries on four continents, and forced him to confront the many discrepancies between the lives we live and the stories we tell.
Deftly moving between past and present, The Lost transforms the story of one family into a profound meditation on our fragile hold on the past. Suspenseful, deeply personal, and beautifully written, this literary tour de force illuminates what is lost, and found, through the passage of time. Daniel Mendelsohn is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and also writes for The New Yorker, the New York Times Book Review, and the New York Times Magazine. He is a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Excellence in Criticism and is the author of The Elusive Embrace. Mendelsohn holds the Charles Ranlett Flint Chair in Humanities at Bard College. He lives in New York City and Trenton, New Jersey. “Mendelsohn succeeds in assembling an immensely human tableau in which each witness has a face and each face a story and destiny.” — Elie Wiesel, Washington Post Book World
